Thanks to regular poster Edjemaster for this information about Gametrailers.com’s excellent 13-part Final Fantasy Retrospective series. This video series takes a look back in time and follows the Final Fantasy series through its origins and history. Currently, the first five parts have been released, and new segments are added weekly.

I watched the first two parts this morning. Each video segment is about 10 minutes long. The content and production quality are top-notch. If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy, these are not to be missed.

EDIT: I should also mention that spoilers abound in the videos, so if you haven’t played a particular Final Fantasy game yet, you may want to hold off on watching that particular element.

Enjoy!

The Fat Chocobo was supposed to be in the Chocobo forest north of Troia. I looked everywhere. I found secret tunnels in the forest that lead to open spaces and ones that lead nowhere. I searched everywhere in this place for the stupid fat Chocobo. If he’s so damn fat, where could he be?

I even resorted to the manual for help. It said I needed to find a place that was “Chocobo stinky”, then use the special vegetables I have on hand to call him. Ok, so I looked again. And again. I could find no place in the forest that is “Chocobo stinky”.

On the verge of giving up, I resorted to my first cheat: I looked online for more info. Luckily, I found one post that shows a screen shot of the Chocobo’s location in the woods. Argh! He was just to the north of the entrance, and he was invisible! The one place I hadn’t looked. And why didn’t they tell me he was invisible? That’s just mean.

Anyway, with that information, we quickly found the damn, fat, invisible Chocobo and dumped all our unwanted crap on him. With that done, we zipped back to Troia, bought every piece of armor or weaponry that looked like it might be made of wood. Now I get why there didn’t seem to be any upgrades in terms of material in the shop. There aren’t any, but they are made of wood, which makes them useful against the Dark Elf’s minions.

Also, there is a special Ruby Ring for sale in the armory that helps you avoid turning into a pig. Since we got one of these from the dancer after that show, I think the game is giving me some sort of hint here. I buy three more of them and put them on our characters.

With that, our preparations are complete. We set out for the Cave of the Dark Elf again. This time we mean business.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

So much for killing stuff with a purpose. We enter the cave, hit our first encounter, and nearly get wiped out. Three of our fighters are seemingly frozen, and only Cid is able to fight. I think there was a quick message that told us something about metal weapons, which I’ve got to assume means that we can’t use metal weapons here. Somehow I must have gotten all that information screwed up in Troia. Anyway, we manage to escape with our lives and get out of the cave.

Once outside, I try to reorganize our party’s equipment so that no one is using metal. We run into a slight problem, however, as our party’s equipment lists are full, even when I sort everything out. Not sure if it’s just me, but it seems as if we can carry a lot fewer items in Final Fantasy IV than we could in the previous games. We’ll need to sell or store some items to make space.

Discouraged by the delay, we decide to head back to town to find a Fat Chocobo or a merchant.

Status: Retreating and Reorganizing

Well, that was easy. The first time I visited Troia, I was brutally tired and playing at two in the morning. I completely forgot that I had visited two strange buildings in the town. One was a sort of research facility for chocobo. The other was a high-end club. In the club, we bought a membership for 10,000 gold that allows us to visit a dance performance. Afterwards, we can visit one of the dancers and get access to some chests of minor items.

The chocobo research facility, however, proves to be much more useful. The researcher there tells us about black chocobo that live in the chocobo forest to the north of Troia. According to the researcher, these chocobo can fly! Even better, they can land in forests! Viola! Problem solved!

We leave the Enterprise, make our way north, and quickly locate the chocobo forest. Inside, we catch a black chocobo. We fly to the cave on the island to the northeast, land, and head inside.

Status: Killing stuff with a purpose

We headed northeast from Troia in the Enterprise. Below us sprawled endless forests. Shortly, we came to an forested island with a cave on it. This was easy, I thought. Only one problem: There’s no place to land. We can’t put the Enterprise down in the trees. Matter of fact, we can’t put the Enterprise down anywhere to the northeast of Troia.

Aha, I think! I remember that we abandoned our long lost hovercraft a while back, and I head out to search for it. We quickly locate it, touch down beside it, and board the water-capable vessel. Problem solved, I think. Or not. The hovercraft can only pass over shallow water, and there is no way it can make it across the deep water to get even close to the cave. Strike this idea.

Baffled, we reboard the Enterprise and head back to Troia to see if there is some sort of clue that we missed the first time through.

Status: Stuck.